


Watch Your Step

by thesnadger



Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: Brief References to Alcohol, Brief reference to self harm, M/M, so much sap you could spread it on pancakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-23 16:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8335243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnadger/pseuds/thesnadger
Summary: It's 1985. Rick is back in Stan's life, after being away for a very long time. He finds a lot of things have changed in his former partner. Not the least of which is a scar he doesn't remember. Sappy, intimate hurt/comfort.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Made for the Stanchez Micro Bang! Charles! and cabonet did some amazing illustrations.
> 
> Charles's: http://imgur.com/yUm4LSp  
> Cabonet's: http://cabonet.tumblr.com/post/152042140124/

It was 1985.

Rick had finally walked out on his wife, had opened a portal and stepped in, swearing he'd never come back. He'd had a lot of bad ideas in his life and marriage had to have been the worst of them.

He'd taken his portal gun and just kept leaving after that. Bouncing from one dimension to the next at first, then when that bored him coming back to his own and trying to find something in it that he could still bring himself to care about. That hadn't faded into the background hum of noise that was most of the human race nowadays, at least in Rick's eyes.

The tracking device he'd implanted in Stan while he was sleeping all those years ago still gave off a signal, to his surprise, so he'd found his way to this backwater lumber town in Oregon where Stan had been living. Showed up on the steps of a creepy old cabin with a handmade sign reading “Murder Hut” hanging over the door and nearly passed out on the porch from what he'd taken to help give him the courage to find his old partner again.

They'd fought a little. Only a little. It had felt like a formality, really. Rick never asked to stay and Stan didn't invite him, but somehow they'd both started talking as if that was how it was going to be. By the same token, neither of them talked about getting back together, but they were sleeping in the same bed every night which said a lot more about how both of them felt than either of them were willing to say out loud.

It wasn't that things were that simple between them. It was more that they'd decided to ignore the complicated stuff in favor of a little peace.

That was how Rick found himself under a heavy wool afghan one night, pressed against Stan's snoring body. Stan was dead asleep, exhausted from another long day, but sleep wasn't coming to Rick. His brain was tormenting him the way it did some nights—reminding him of all his mistakes. Of all the shit he'd seen that he couldn't let go of. He considered getting up to take the edge off it with drink, but since Stan was a cheapass who ran the heater at bare minimum it was freezing cold in the house and he didn't want to leave the warm cocoon they'd made under the blankets. So he stayed curled up and fidgeted while his mind continued clawing at itself.

Stan shifted in his sleep and his undershirt slid away from his shoulder, just a little bit. Just enough for Rick to catch a glimpse of something in the moonlight.

Rick had noticed that Stan seemed to have suddenly developed some weird modesty. That he kept his undershirt on at all times, even when they were in bed together. Of course Rick had noticed, but he hadn't asked. That was something he and Stan were good at, when it came to each other at least. Knowing when not to ask. He sensed when there was something buried that Stan didn't want to unearth, so he let it stay a secret. It was the least he could do, given what he'd already refused to do for him.

But here was that secret, half-unearthed and right in front of him.

Rick would like to say he hesitated before tugging Stan's shirt away from his shoulder, exposing the bare skin underneath. But once he'd seen the telltale color of scar tissue, he had to uncover the rest. Had to prod the wound, expose the hurt, to know the shape of it. It was something manic in him, strong enough to make him forget all the things that had been keeping him awake. He had to see Stan's new pain, the pain that Rick hadn't been there for.

Rick examined the scar in the moonlight, the one that hadn't been there the last time he'd been in Stan's life, the last time he'd curled up beside that warm body against the cold outside.

It was bad.

He'd seen worse. He'd seen far worse things, shit that would make most people spend the rest of their lives curled in a dark quiet corner humming the theme songs to children's cartoons. He'd even seen worse things happening to Stan.

It was still pretty bad, though.

He recognized the shape. Stan had taken him down to the basement the night after he showed up at his door, after all. After Rick found him again, he'd been afraid that Stan would hold a grudge. That he'd still be angry about Columbia, but he'd looked at Rick like he was the answer to his prayers. So it had felt like a knife to the gut when Rick realized that at least part of that was Stan hoping that Rick could use his genius brain to get that monstrosity his idiot brother had built working again.

He'd refused to touch it. Not because he felt snubbed (at least, not just because of that) but because he knew Bad News when he was looking at it, and that thing was Bad with a capital Fuck No. Even he had enough common sense not to touch technology designed by inter-dimensional demons. He'd tear a hole in reality the size of Texas if he got that thing started again.

Instead, he'd promised to use his portal gun to help Stan find Ford, and he'd swallowed the bitterness that came from feeling like Stan cared more about seeing the brother that hadn't given him the time of day for ten years than he did about having Rick back. Just as he knew Stan was swallowing his own bitterness after hearing that Rick probably _could_ get machine he'd spent three and a half years struggling with working, but wouldn't.

Between the two of them, they made a pretty fine mess sometimes. All the time. Whatever.

Anyway. He'd seen the glowing symbol on the panel and noticed the wide berth Stan had given it when they walked past. Stan hadn't told him much about how Ford had wound up in the portal, just that they'd had a fight. Rick could put two and two together, though. His intellect was occasionally good for something other than keeping him awake at night. At some point in the fight, Ford must've pushed him into the console. So he got burned. Again.

Rick ran his fingertips over the scar tissue, feeling Stan's sleeping body twitch and shift under his touch. He knew all of Stan's biggest scars by touch. The irregular line trailing up his belly that he'd had ever since that night in the emergency room. The smeared stripe of a burn he'd gotten on the edge of the radiator as they were climbing out the window of that tiny room they'd been locked in. Even the slashes running up his arm that Rick had silently kissed night after night, each press of his lips a wordless plea— _please, please, don't, don't do it again._ He touched this one with his fingertips, running them up and down over the damaged flesh, tracing the shape of it over and over.

Rick focused on the act of tracing it, committing it to his memory. Burning it into himself in a far less painful way than Stan had. After a while, Stan's little twitches and shifts settled down, and his breathing fell into a slow steady rhythm while Rick remained awake, his mind settling into calm as he meditatively focused on Stan's back.

 

* * *

 

When Stan woke up, it was to the sensation of Rick's cheek against his shoulder, his face pressed into his back. As awareness slowly trickled in, he felt Rick moving behind him. Gently stroking the scar over his right shoulder. Pausing now and then to kiss it, nuzzle it.

Stan closed his eyes, knowing Rick would stop if he noticed him awake, and he didn't want this to stop. For once he wasn't waking up with his scar itching or burning with phantom pain. The muscles in his back weren't coiled up with tension. There was a deeply soothing feeling coming from the movement of Rick's mouth, the gentle touch of his fingertips, that spread and radiated through him. Stan wanted to savor it, to hold on to it for as long as it would last.

 


End file.
